All posts tagged ‘Maze’

Who couldn’t use an extra $50 to spend at ThinkGeek this time of year? This week, said $50 goes to Jim and his ten-year-old son, Nate, the younger of whom solved the puzzle while home sick. Jim also points out this week’s entry structure in which younger entrants earn more slips in the hat — “double the number of entries for any solver under age 15, triple the entries for any solver under 10 and quadruple the entries for solvers under age 6 at time of submission” — means that a five-year-old should, in fact, get 24 entries. Do you see how?

Feel better soon, Nate! And congrats, Jim. The rest of us can use the code GEEKDAD22DC for $10 off a ThinkGeek purchase of $50 or more. Happy holidays! And don’t forget to come back Monday to see what goodness Judd has cooked up for the season. Only 56 shopping days until Groundhog Day!

This week’s puzzle is somewhat homespun and not fiendishly hard. And so I’m willing to double the number of entries for any solver under age 15, triple the entries for any solver under 10 and quadruple the entries for solvers under age 6 at time of submission. This means that if your child’s birthday is this week, solve today rather than later. It also means that if you have no child under 15 you should phone ahead to schools and day-care facilities rather than loitering outside in hopes of securing the solving help of a minor. The goal, of course, is to survive the journey through presents, or in this case, just one single present. Every journey starts with a single step. Remember, there are only 315 days until Columbus Day!

Maze-O is a maze building toy and a recently launched Kickstarter project that looks like a bargain.

The offerings are plastic maze building sets from $30-50 that look solidly designed, in beautiful block colors and are generic enough for cars, marbles, HexBugs – you name it. It is the generic nature of the design that appeals so much. No doubt innovative geeklets will find any number of items to run through their mazes, and with 72 pieces at $50 there are enough combinations to keep them entertained.

Thank you for not killing my gecko. For whatever reason, I’m rather fond of him.

For those of you who missed it, our friend Corrosive Gecko was in dire need of guidance up a fairly basic fence and must move according to the following rules:

1. Each turn, Corrosive Gecko must move exactly one leg or arm. You pick which.

2. He can grab either horizontal or vertical sections of fence, but never at the junctions.

3. Each turn, Corrosive Gecko slides his appendage along the fence wire exactly the distance of one side of a grid box. This means that if Corrosive Gecko is holding a vertical wire, he may move his appendage straight up to the next box’s vertical wire (1), or may move his appendage up and then right (2), or up and then left (3). If C.G. is holding a horizontal wire, he may only move right and up (4), or left and up (5).

4. Being a rather corrosive gecko, anything he touches disintegrates the instant his appendage leaves it. Once he uses a spot, our acidic friend may not use it again.

5. He is not one of those window-sticking stretchy geckos. At any given time, CG’s appendages must stay within four “moves” of every other appendage. If not, he is ripped apart and squirts gecko guts across the fence, dissolving the entire lattice in one pump of a dying gecko’s heart (you get the point).

6. No more than two appendages may be in a vertical or horizontal line at any given moment.

7. Once CG reaches one hand or foot to the top wire, he wins. (And you may not do anything sneaky like removing an appendage for a move, jumping, or other intuitively forbidden folderol.)

I have to say, Randy’s winning answer, which was randomly chosen from a much better batch than last week’s pile of gecko killers, was much different than mine — I had gecko hugging the right rail; Randy kept him left. For those of you who did not get down with vertical gecko twister, use the following code to get $10.00 of an order of $50.00 or more at ThinkGeek: GEEKDAD93SF.

Arrr scurvy dogs and bonnie lasses! For true last week I be posting a puzzle regardin’ Corrosive Gecko, a wee piratical lizard who be needin’ to reach the top of his fence. Though it be lookin’ easy, t’was tougher than hardtack left too long in the Caribbean sun! Here the Gecko be back, like the lingering dark dreams borne of last week’s Thai food.

De-pirated from a time long past, here be the rules:

1. Each turn, Corrosive Gecko must move exactly one leg or arm. You pick which.

2. He can grab either horizontal or vertical sections of fence, but never at the junctions.

3. Each turn, Corrosive Gecko slides his appendage along the fence wire exactly the distance of one side of a grid box. This means that if Corrosive Gecko is holding a vertical wire, he may move his appendage straight up to the next box’s vertical wire (1), or may move his appendage up and then right (2), or up and then left (3). If C.G. is holding a horizontal wire, he may only move right and up (4), or left and up (5).

4. Being a rather corrosive gecko, anything he touches disintegrates the instant his appendage leaves it. Once he uses a spot, our acidic friend may not use it again.

5. He is not one of those window-sticking stretchy geckos. At any given time, CG’s appendages must stay within four “moves” of every other appendage. If not, he is ripped apart and squirts gecko guts across the fence, dissolving the entire lattice in one pump of a dying gecko’s heart (you get the point).

6. No more than two appendages may be in a vertical or horizontal line at any given moment.

7. Once CG reaches one hand or foot to the top wire, he wins. (And you may not do anything sneaky like removing an appendage for a move, jumping, or other intuitively forbidden folderol.)

8. If anyone is able to create and submit an accurate animation of Corrosive Gecko’s path up the fence, I will enter your name thrice in Friday’s drawing for a $50 ThinkGeek gift certificate. Otherwise, find some other creative way to demonstrate CG’s path up the fence. Mail your answer to GeekDad Puzzle Central by Friday afternoon for your chance at the $50 in riches from ThinkGeek.

Do you hear that sound? Yes, it’s the tiny, high-pitched screaming of our dear little hero Corrosive Gecko dying a thousand deaths on his march up the fence. And as much as I hate rewarding Will Etienne with another $50 ThinkGeek gift certificate, he submitted the ONLY correct solution to this week’s puzzle. Most of you ripped CG limb from limb, violating rule #5 below and spewing poor Gecko’s acidic guts across the fence.

And here I was thinking it was an easy week…

My trick was to scroll the gecko diagonally, spin him, and then switch diagonal directions. Of course, this was WAY too involved, and Will’s trick was to simply split CG’s legs out one to the right and the other to the left and then sequentially climb the little bugger straight up the fence.

For those of you who missed it, our friend Corrosive Gecko was in dire need of guidance up a fairly basic fence and must move according to the following rules:

1. Each turn, Corrosive Gecko must move exactly one leg or arm. You pick which.

2. He can grab either horizontal or vertical sections of fence, but never at the junctions.

Oh, no! Corrosive Gecko is at the bottom of the fence where he can be munched by Chirp-Chirp the carnivorous robin! Your job is to guide Corrosive Gecko, shown below, from his current position to the top of the fence.

Of course, there are some rules:

1. Each turn, Corrosive Gecko must move exactly one leg or arm. You pick which.

2. He can grab either horizontal or vertical sections of fence, but never at the junctions.

3. Each turn, Corrosive Gecko slides his appendage along the fence wire exactly the distance of one side of a grid box. This means that if Corrosive Gecko is holding a vertical wire, he may move his appendage straight up to the next box’s vertical wire (1), or may move his appendage up and then right (2), or up and then left (3). If C.G. is holding a horizontal wire, he may only move right and up (4), or left and up (5).

4. Being a rather corrosive gecko, anything he touches disintegrates the instant his appendage leaves it. Once he uses a spot, our acidic friend may not use it again.

5. He is not one of those window-sticking stretchy geckos. At any given time, CG’s appendages must stay within four “moves” of every other appendage. If not, he is ripped apart and squirts gecko guts across the fence, dissolving the entire lattice in one pump of a dying gecko’s heart (you get the point).

6. No more than two appendages may be in a vertical or horizontal line at any given moment.

7. Once CG reaches one hand or foot to the top wire, he wins. (And you may not do anything sneaky like removing an appendage for a move, jumping, or other intuitively forbidden folderol.)

8. If anyone is able to create and submit an accurate animation of Corrosive Gecko’s path up the fence, I will enter your name thrice in Friday’s drawing for a $50 ThinkGeek gift certificate. Otherwise, find some other creative way to demonstrate CG’s path up the fence. Mail your answer to GeekDad Puzzle Central by Friday afternoon for your chance at the $50 in riches from ThinkGeek.

* This is not a difficult puzzle, but consider learning to move Corrosive Gecko, because I’m sorely tempted to stick him on a more challenging fence two Mondays from now.

Here, without further ado and in stunning illustrative detail, is Corrosive Gecko and his fence-climbing conundrum:

A couple trips to the grocery store later, and we’ve pretty much recovered from dog sitting — see above for a hint why. Yes, this is Pacha, the Ultimate Eating Machine. And many of you solved our food’s circuitous path through Pacha, including through her hollow left hind leg and similarly hollow tail.

The winner this week, randomly selected from correct entries is Torben, Giver of Header Images, who said the following of his solution method: “As usual, I let the computer do the hard work and utilised one of my favourite maze-solving algorithms (it is so simple that I and the children can use it easily): Fill the dead-ends first (red); separate alternative paths between two points and fill all but one of them (blue), preferably leaving the shortest — the remaining (white) is the wanted path through the maze.”

In other news, Will found two possible paths and wondered if Pacha had, maybe, herniated her small intestine; Earl wondered if I might be willing to take care of two cats — and by “take care of” I assume he meant baste them with hotdog drippings and put them in the garage with Pacha for an hour.

The rest of you may use code GEEKDAD93SF for $10 off a $50.00 ThinkGeek order. Don’t forget to drop by on Monday, the day of Labor, for another installment from our puzzlemeister, Dave G.

Problem statement: You know those 14-page kids’ maze books that sell for $4.99 on the spinning wire racks of your local drugstore? And do you know how long it takes your budding puzzle genius to solve the entire book? About 14 minutes. That’s $21.39 for an hour of entertainment. You’d be better off hiring a creative babysitter from your local university’s childhood ed program.

The Solution: Or you can simply and entertainingly create your own mazes. Stop! Don’t immediately cave to self doubt! Turn that “I can’t” into an “I can!” Soon, you’ll be a-MAZING! (author’s note: you get that this is intentionally over glee club, right?)

I’m thinking that we already took a wrong turn to get to this point. We’ve already been in this maze for 30 minutes and I don’t think we are any closer to getting out.

“I see victory bridge this way. Let’s go.” She wins the argument, but is wrong about seeing victory bridge. As we step around the corner of tall corn plants, I see the scorpion bridge. Not the way out. On the bright side, it does have another stamp for our collection.

So our adventure continued, searching for clues, prizes, and the way out.